Italian power agent Carol Levi dies at 79

Ten percenter repped Anna Magnani, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci

ROME – Carol Levi, the grande dame of Italian agents who worked for William Morris for twenty years before founding her own tenpercentery, Carol Levi & Company., and repped Anna Magnani, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and many other top Italo talents with the gracious competence that became her trademark died in Rome on December 27.

Cause of death was complications from respiratory problems. She was 79 and worked until the end of her days.

Born into a family of Florentine aristocrats, Carol Levi entered the Italian film business as wife, and subsequently widow, of Pilade Levi, general manager of Paramount’s Rome office during the 1950’s and 60’s when U.S. productions shot at Cinecittà Studios, then known as Hollywood on the Tiber.

One of Carol Levi’s first clients was Anna Magnani, whom she represented as an agent for William Morris in the 1960’s past the peak of Magnani’s career. In the 1960’s Levi signed on the then very young Bertolucci, who became a close friend and brought her to bask in the glow of his nine Oscars for “The Last Emperor” in 1987.

Unquestionably Italy’s most powerful agent in her heyday, Levi also handled Italo icons Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale, and highly esteemed directors Franco Zeffirelli, Lina Wertmuller, the late Mario Monicelli, Marco Bellocchio and Marco Tullio Giordana. To most of her long list of her clients she was also a trusted confidante and friend.